Chapter 3 Scene 3

For the fortieth time on that interminable day, Nahl cursed his decision to ride rather than take Cosi up on her offer of a carriage. They’d ridden the entire morning, taken lunch in the saddle, and didn’t show any sign of stopping soon.

Dros had been moving up and down the column, speaking with men and women Nahl didn’t know, but Dros appeared friendly with.

Around mid-afternoon, Dros pulled his ganda up alongside Nahl and smiled. “You look more comfortable in the saddle than you did this morning.”

Nahl nodded. “Cordone does all the work, just like you promised.”

“She’s the best ganda I’ve ever known. Smart enough to get herself out of trouble and compliant enough to know when she shouldn’t. This fellow is her son.” He patted the black monster of a ganda he sat astride. “A fine mount in his own right, but nothing compared to her.”

They rode along without speaking for a while. The sounds of gandas and soldiers on every side of them. It all made Nahl a bit nervous, though Dros had never been more in his element. He rode tall in the saddle, watching those under his command with a kind eye.

After a while Nahl worked up the nerve to ask the question that had been on his mind most of the day. “How did you know I was afraid of riding? I’ve never told anyone.”

Dros shrugged. “I suppose the same way you knew I was afraid of hurting Cosi the first time I came back from the front.”

“I knew you were afraid because I’m sightborn.”

“Really? Because I’m quite certain that before you hugged me that day we had never touched.”

That had been the first time Nahl had sensed the rage of the battleborn. He’d never felt anything like it, before or since. “You hesitated. At the garu inlaid in the floor. I’d never seen you hesitate in anything before so I knew something was wrong and I wanted to know what.”

Dros smiled. “That day, when you intercepted me and hugged me, you took away some of the rage. I’d been so afraid of hurting her and you made me safe again. That was when I realized you were the other half of me I didn’t know I was missing.”

Cheeks heating with a blush, Nahl glanced at him sidelong. “As far back as that? I had no idea.”

“I know.” Dros scoffed. “Trying to seduce you that winter was an exercise in frustration.”

Nahl laughed. “You could have just said something.”

“I didn’t want to risk embarrassing myself if you didn’t feel the same. I was hoping you’d touch me again so that you’d know, but you kept running away every time I tried to corner you that winter. You had me convinced when I left in the spring that you weren’t interested.”

“Nothing could have been further from the truth.” Nahl let the gandas walk a few steps before continuing, “I was afraid after the first time. Sometimes touching you is like being on fire.”

“I’m familiar with that particular sensation.” Dros was quiet for several seconds. “In any case, when you welcomed me the following winter, everything was resolved.”

The sudden surge of blood rage and mingled desire had nearly overwhelmed Nahl. “I practically assaulted you in the receiving room.”

Dros grinned. “Exactly.”

Remembering Cosi’s expression following that encounter made Nahl laugh so hard he came close to falling out of the saddle. “The look on Cosi’s face.”

“Hilarious,” Dros agreed.

As the laughter faded, Nahl regretted the secret he kept from Dros. He deserved to know. “She’s pregnant.”

Dros nodded slowly. “I assumed as much after she missed her cycle at midwinter.”

That had been nearly two months ago. She was further along than he had suspected. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Dros shrugged. “I thought you knew.”

“Of course you did. I should have.” Nahl sighed. “I’ve been keeping my distance from her because that’s what we’d agreed to until she conceived. She didn’t want to tell me after because she thought I wouldn’t go through with the visit to the Indra if I knew.”

“And you’re angry?”

“Yes, aren’t you? I should be there to protect her.”

Dros’s patient expression was infuriating. “She’s safer at the reach than you are heading south.”

“She has enemies other than the Samha.”

“Cosi is better able to handle an assassin sent by her sister than you are, pregnant or no.”

That admission hurt more than it should have. Nahl was well aware she was a warlord in her own right, having trained beside Dros, but the words still stung. “So you’re not at all worried that our pregnant Peacebringer is by herself?”

“I’m always worried when I leave the reach.” Dros turned to him and smiled. “At least this time I can watch one of you.”

Nahl ground his teeth. “You’re making it very difficult to be angry with you.”

“I’m trying to be charming so you’ll agree to sleep in my tent tonight.”

Nahl shook his head. How could Dros always make him want to laugh even when he was feeling miserable? “I don’t think you have to worry about that. My hurt feelings need soothing.”

“In that case, yes, I’m upset she didn’t tell you. She should have let you make the decision to come or not on your own, and I’ll tell her as much when next I see her.”

“She should have told you, too.”

“She might well have if I’d given her the chance.” Dros cast a glance his way. “She asked me last night if I would stay if she ordered me to, and I asked her not to.”

“Because you would?”

Dros nodded. “She knows us both well enough to know what she should and shouldn’t tell us to get her way.”

“She must have been a handful as a girl.”

“You have no idea. She had me running this way and that trying to gain favor with her.” Dros chuckled. “And all along she had no intention of even giving me a kiss, never mind what I wanted.”

“What changed?”

Dros took a deep breath. “There were some girls a few years ahead of us who gave her a hard time. She was always the smallest, and they thought they could bully her. I came upon her surrounded by four of them, yelling curses that would have made full-grown men blush. She made it clear to me that I shouldn’t interfere.

“Cosi beat them all until they squealed and I just stood by and watched. She told me that night that I would be her Sword when she was Peacebringer.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Cosida Garuborn, Peacebringer of the Twenty Bands doesn’t need a Sword to deal with the danger that’s in front of her, she never has. She needs someone to reach where she can’t while she deals with what’s in front of her.”

“And what does she need a Shield for?”

Dros gave him a long look that suggested he should already know the answer to that. “To protect the people she cares for, because she thinks that’s her greatest weakness.”

Nahl scoffed. “Her mother’s doing.”

Dros nodded. “She was a hard woman. Be thankful you never met her. You didn’t have to be sightborn to know how much she despised you.”

“Hard to reconcile that with Cosi’s softness.”

Dros laughed. “You’re the only person in the twenty bands who believes Cosi is soft because she’d stab anyone else who said it. Myself included.”

He hadn’t thought about how different she behaved when it was just the two of them, for him she was always the same because he could always feel the softness in her heart. “I guess she really isn’t that way with everyone.”

“Only you.” Dros allowed the gandas to walk a few steps before he spoke again, “I’ve never seen her as vulnerable as she allows herself to be in your arms.”

He didn’t have to touch Dros to pick up the note of envy in his voice, soft and resigned as it was. “I assumed she was the same with you when you were alone.”

“Not once.” Dros shook his shaggy head. “I was horribly jealous when I saw her with you the first time. I tried to figure out ways to make it safe for her to show me that side of her, but it never quite worked. After a while I realized that was just another reason she needed you, why we both did, to witness the parts of her she couldn’t let show on the outside.”

“I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

Dros shrugged. “It’s nothing now.”

“What changed?”

“I can see the other side of it. You and I share something different than what either of us has with her.”

That resonated with Nahl, stirring something on a deep level that he’d been aware of but hadn’t been able to put into words. He knew exactly what both of them felt for him, and what they felt for each other. The differences were clear for him when they might not be for someone without his gifts. “I’m supposed to be the expert on emotions and you’re supposed to be the one that hits things.”

Dros favored him with a smile. “Do you want to try hitting things for a while? You might like it.”

“I’ll leave that to you.” He took a moment to choose his words carefully. “You make her feel powerful. When she doubts that she can do something, she thinks of you.”

Dros tightened his hands on the reins as his gaze turned inward. He didn’t say anything for a while, and then his breath hitched in a long sigh. “Thank you.”